Use the following criteria to decide if a publication is popular or scholarly.
|
Scholarly Articles |
Popular Articles |
|
| Author | Expert in the field, credentials and affilated university listed | Journalist, freelance writer or staff writers |
| Length of article | Longer more detailed content | Shorter articles giving a brief overview |
| Intended audience | Researchers, experts in the field | General Public |
| Layout | Includes an abstract, footnotes, list of citations. | Does not follow a standard format, often a simple title |
| Images | Charts, graphs, tables of data | Colorful, eye catching photos |
| Vocabulary | Specialized terminology, need extensive knowlege of discipline to understand text | Written at the level to be understood by the general public |
If an article is not available as a PDF, you will see the Get a Copy button instead. Click on it to find out if the PDF is available from another library database, or to request it from interlibrary loan.
ATLA Religion Database:
While searching for children's/youth ministry in the database will bring up results, the actual subject heading for articles in this area is "church work with youth." Use this in a subject search to pull up the best and most complete list of results!
PsycInfo, ERIC, and Sociological Abstracts:
Use Truncation
Adolescent, Adolescents, Adolecence
Teen, Teens, Teenage, Teenagers
How do you search library databases for all those variations? By using truncation! By placing a truncation symbol at the end of a root word, you can search a database for all the variations of that word.
Many databases use an asterisk for the truncation symbol.
Example:
adolescen* --- retrieves adolescent, adolescents, or adolescence
teen* -- retreives teen, teens, teenage, teenagers
